The Diary Game Season 3 (10/24/2021) | CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION INITIATIVES

Hello beautiful people! Allow me to once again take part in this game. Same as usual, 20% of this post goes to @steemitphcurrator to show love and appreciation to this wonderful community.

According to the former US president Barack Obama, no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. Not many of us realize it, and we worry so much about everything in the world BUT THIS. However, not the DepEd Lapu-Lapu's Disaster Risk Reduction Management coordinators, not my team, not me. We truly understand how this world needs help. We hear it pleading, we've seen it suffering and we are not turning a blind eye!

With that, our team has been initiating different climate change adaptation activities in the different schools and areas of Lapu-Lapu City. And today, is one of those triumphant days.

The Division of Lapu-Lapu DRRM Team with the school heads in the Island of Olango.

Briefing of the do's and don'ts in planting the mangrove seedling.

With the help of the SEED4COM, an NGO that shares the same goals as we do, we were able to procure with 1,000 mangrove seedlings. Those seedlings were given to each and every one of us to plant.

The black plastic beside me is from the seedling. We did not tear it so it can be reused.

Finishing up my first seedling wishing it'll live.

My husband helping me dig the sand since it was a bit hard.

The team expanded to almost a kilometer of the coastline and after an hour and thirthy minutes, we accomplished planting 1,000 magrove seedlings!

We wasted no time and then set the mangrove cleaning in motion. The pictures above might have already given you the idea of the trashes present in the area. Nonetheless, those are nothing compared to what we saw when we tried to set foot into the deeper part of the mangrove forest.

These photos do not even justify how polluted the area was. Some trashes were hooked into the mangroves and some were very hard to reach since we didn't want to step and break any of its roots.

A face mask tied into a sprouting mangrove.

A broken hanger choking another sprouting mangrove.

At this point in time, I was reminded of how much we failed as stewards of the world. Nature offered nothing but food, air, water, land and it's beauty, and we repaid it with destruction. I just wished we could clean up everything but we knew we couldn't, so we just picked up as many trash as we can for the time being, and already planned for another clean-up drive because we knew the place screams HELP!

As much as we wanted to spend the whole day cleaning, we had a series of activities in line for the day so we had to move on. We concluded the mangrove cleaning with 700 KILOGRAMS OF TRASH collected and turned over to the barangay personnel for proper disposal. The day had just started and we had accomplished so much with the help of everyone in the team.

A thirty-minute break was given to us all to rest and freshen up a bit for the next activities. Truth be told, I was able to take a twenty-minute nap due to exhaustion. The remaining time was utilized to freshen myself a bit since I still had to host the program for the rest of the day!

The program was full of invited speakers from different significant offices which are also battling against climate change. The first speaker was Mr. Jose F. Layese, a Senior Science Research Specialist from Research Development Unit, who discussed about The Importance of Mangrove in in the Bio-diversity and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation. Next to him was Engr. Roderico Tagaan, the chief of CENRO Lapu-Lapu City, who discussed about The Role of Material Recovery Facilities to Lessen the Impacts of Climate Change. Lastly, we had an invited speaker from Los Angeles California, Lana Mika Kim, a 17 year old CEO of Precious Plastics. She discussed about how they upcycle plastics over and over again and raise funds out of it.

Ms. Lana Mika Lim giving her discussion via Google Meet

Aside from those fruitful talks, there was also a poster-making activity done by the ALS (Alternative Learning System) students of Olango. They were preparing their banner for the climate change walk that followed right after their poster-making activity.

There was also a display of BASKET CASE (an advocacy to help mitigate climate change by limiting dependence on Single Use Plastic in the community). These baskets were given as tokens to the speakers and promoted to be used instead of plastics.

The program ended with a challenge from Ma'am Ma. Elena D. Berame, the Project Development Officer II of the Division of Lapu-Lapu City, to GIVE JUSTICE TO THE CLIMATE AND TO ACT NOW!

Everyone should definitely ACT NOW! Not just some organizations, not just the few people, not just us. We ALL should take part in saving the earth because WE ONLY HAVE ONE, and it's dying.

Today has been long and tiring, but I don't mind doing it as long as I could. I look forward to doing another climate change adaptation initiative as soon as possible. Perhaps with you, Steemians. What do you think?

Before I end this diary, I'd like to invite @aprilmarieyuan, @hopefrecy and @jenesa to participate in this Diary Game too!

Love,
Glenna